Kensett, William

66 Mortimer St, Cavendish Sq., London; chair maker (fl.1815–39)

Kensett was listed as a ‘chair manufacturer’ at 66 Mortimer Street by 1815 and as ‘upholsterer’ at the same address in Pigot’s directories 1832 and 1839. The census of 1841 recorded Kensett as a cabinet maker aged 50 together with his wife, Elizabeth, aged 50. Later directory entries refer to him as a fancy chair maker. In 1833 J. C. Loudon in his Encyclopaedia records him as having ‘some curious specimens both of Elizabethan and more ancient furniture’. In addition to the sale of these ‘antiques’ he made a ‘correct facsimile of a chair taken from Tintern Abbey, and now in Troy House, Monmouthshire; and two other chairs from Glastonbury; one of which, called the abbot's chair, is of very elaborate workmanship’. He was the probable maker of a reproduction 17^th century turned chair in the Bishop’s Palace, Wells, Somerset, c.1830-40, now in the V&A (W.24-1913) and formerly owned by the collector, Walter L Behrens. 

Image

Copyright (Attribution/Credit)

© Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Oak and ash turned chair, 1830-40 [W.24-1913] © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O78983/armchair-kensett-mr/

Kensett also maintained in Mortimer St a room fitted up with ‘Elizabethan fragments’ for client's inspection.

Sources: DEFM; Westgarth, A Biographical Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Antique and Curiosity Dealers (2009); Lindfield, ‘Triangular Chairs at Strawberry Hill: The Genuine and the Fabricated’, FHS Newsletter (November 2016).